Find words that have been written or spoken by someone else. You can gather these words from a variety of means – interviews, journals, archives, eavesdropping. Your subject may be a friend, stranger, alive or dead. Select your five favourite examples and create five images that do justice to the essence of those words.
You may choose to present your images with or without the original words. Either way make sure that the images are working hard to tell a story. If you decided to include the words, ensure that they add to the meaning rather than describing the image or shutting it down. Try to keep your image-and-text combinations consistent – perhaps they are all overheard conversations on a bus or all come from an old newspaper report. Keep them part of a story.
Consider different ways of presenting the words. Audio or video might lend itself well to this kind of work, or a projection of images using voice-over. Experiment.
I was rather scratching my head on what to do for this exercise until there was an ongoing episode at work a few days ago regarding our photocopy machine, which frustrated me no end. My exercise is based on those events.
He Needs Another Part
“The photocopier keeps on jamming. We need the technician to come in and service it so that we don’t run into problems when I’m printing 1,500 graduation booklets.” “He has been here for most of the morning. He needs to order in some parts”.“Look he has taken the machine to pieces – some of it is standing in the passage!” “He needs another part!”“When is this machine going to be fixed?”“Did you see the screws?” “Where did you leave the screws?” “On top of the machine.” “You took something apart and left the screws on top of the photocopier … How dumb is that!”“At last I can start printing the 1,500 graduation programs.” “Remember – its only a temporary fix. He needs another part.” “So when is this machine going to be fixed?”
Anna Fox’s work My Mother’s Cupboards is an autobiography of when Fox’s father was ill and confined to a wheelchair. Her mother was the main caregiver. Fox made the work rather secretively, keeping a notebook with her and recording her father’s rantings, particularly those about her mother, grandmother and herself.
These quotes pointed to something desperately wrong going on, a terror of women and an attempt to squash the life out of us.
As a contrast to the wild, abusive rantings of her father, she photographed her mother’s cupboards which were always very neat.
I photographed the cupboards to deliberately exaggerate the neatness and that neatness became violent like the quotes.
Anna Fox designed her book in a similar fashion as a small prayer book, with light weight pages and pale pink covers. The text (structured like poetry) and images show through the translucent pages, layering on top of on another. The print is tiny and an elegant cursive font is used so the viewer is enticed in to read the text only to be confronted with words that shock them.
My Mother’s Cupboards and My Father’s Words by Anna Fox Colour photographs of my mother’s tidy cupboards together with excerpts from my father’s rantings. An unexpectedly wicked narrative exploring a claustrophobic relationship, designed as a miniature bookwork.
The front of the book bears the title “My Mother’s Cupboards” and the rest of the book’s title is on the back of the book “My Father’s Words” which is probably only read once the book is closed, thereby providing a lingering ambiguity which is never really resolved.
This is an example of work where the text and images just don’t seem to makes sense together in the ordinary sense, but could almost work in a standalone manner. However, juxtaposed as they are and presented in the delicate manner that they are, the text and images become interlaced and a fusion is created that is highly personal and autobiographical.
Calle’s Take Care of Yourself is a body of work that was made in response to a ‘Dear Jane’ email she received from her boyfriend, breaking off their relationship. The title of this body work is taken from his sign off “take care of yourself”. In this body of work she gives the letter to 107 women of various occupations, e.g. linguist, copy editor, judge, markswoman, chess player, actress and clown to name just a few, and asked them to analyse the email from their professional standpoint.
I asked the participants to answer professionally, to analyze a breakup letter that I had received from a man. The parameters were fixed. For example, I wanted the grammarian to speak about grammar—I wanted to play with the dryness of professional vocabulary. I didn’t want the women expressing sentiment for me.
Calle, Interview Magazine
One of the interpretations can be seen in the video below (luckily there are English subtitles). Calle used various methods to interpret this letter. One of the woman who was asked to interpret the email created crossword puzzles as a profession and Calle photographed this crossword puzzle. Another woman was a singer who created a song in response. One even responded in sign language.
This body of work is a prime example of not allowing the medium to limit the interpretation of the work.
Reference List
Calle, Sophie (2007) Take Care of Yourself (emma_la_clown- Prenez soin de vous) [user-generated content online] Creat. Penelope1967. 24 April, 2011. 5 mins 1 sec. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnW_trUPUmI (Accessed 17 April, 2017)
This is my second look at some of Jim Goldberg’s work, the first being during Context and Narrative (see posting here where I reviewed Open See).
In Raised by Wolves, Goldberg’s narrative takes on many forms: “a traveling art gallery exhibit, a book, a website, and an experience. All of these radically different modes of narrative function to tell the same story” (American SuburbX). The video (which might be the website mention previously) is a cacophony of sounds and images. Reminiscent of old scratchy movies of the 1950’s, the images scan so quickly across the screen that they merge into one another before being blacked out. The subjects themselves talk over the sound of traffic and city bustle, sometimes audible, sometimes not. Somehow the video reminded me a little of news footage I had seen of the holocaust camps during World War II. There was a similar tone and chaoticness attached.
The book is quieter. One has the time to read and study and digest the narrative. The accompanying text seems to be in different handwritings, probably written by the subjects themselves, hastily scribbled and carelessly crossed out. Like the Open See the subjects have written their own story which makes the work less objective. According to American SuburbX Raised by Wolves book version has a blend of photos and video stills. The text is a mixture of handwritten notes and letters and transcripts of conversation between the photographer and the subjects. The project is done in a photojournalistic style.
From the article I have read in American SuburbX I feel it would be a disservice to provide commentary on the book without having looked at it in detail. Sadly it is not available at the Vancouver Public Library. From what I can glean on the internet the work appears to be very edgy, gritty and brutally honest, with quite a bit of shock value attached.
I fell in love with Duane Michals’ work when I was doing Context and Narrative and researched his work for my assignment 2 at that time. He has an uncanny way of leaving the viewer either chuckling away at the humour attached to his images or totally enthralled with his narratives and methods. His use of text with images have been the inspiration of other photographers such as Jim Goldberg and Cindy Sherman.
Ah Dreams, 1984 by Duane Michals
His use of text with images (usually handwritten around the photo) is quite imaginative, sometimes humorous, sometimes quite tongue-in-cheek or serious. In an interview with The New Yorker magazine when asked about the use of captions with his photography, Michals responded:
My writing grew out of my frustration with photography. I never believed a photograph is worth a thousand words. If I took a picture of you, it would tell me nothing about your English accent; it would tell me nothing about you as a person. With somebody you know really well, it can be frustrating. Sixty per cent of my work is photography and the rest is writing.
Duane Michals (The New Yorker)
Michals refer to his portraits as “prose portraits” claiming that a photo can never be a true representation of oneself. There are always hidden aspects to one’s character. A prose portrait tells us about the nature of the person. In his own words a prose portrait is “about a person, rather than of a person” (Michals, The New Yorker). This statement would explain why he adds rather down to earth captions to some of his portrait photos, like the one below.
James Coburn c. 1980s by Duane Michals
In another interview with American Photo I gathered the following valuable advice from Michals on creativity:
You should always stay open to every experience that comes your way. A lot of experiences will be strange and alien and scary and that’s the very reason you should search them out and investigate them. If you only stick to the familiar, you might as well get back in the womb.
Our lives are filled with experiences. … So we encounter all kinds of things and it’s how we respond to them that gives them their significance.
So always be open to new experiences and once they occur, don’t be afraid because being creative is based on fear—you don’t know what you’re doing. If you already know what you’re doing, you’re not really being creative.
Creativity is the discovery that you make in the process of evolving. So that’s essentially the most important thing to me, to always stay open.
Duane Michals (American Photo)
I found some of the captions on his work rather cryptic at times, but that might be because I’m not American and not familiar with some of the cultural references made. On the whole the captions serve to draw the viewer in, firstly to analyse the handwriting – Michals’ handwriting is a little to decipher at times, and secondly to engage with the narrative in the image.
Kaylynn Deveney lived close to an old gentleman by the name of Albert Hastings. As she got to know him, she started working on a photographic project with him, documenting his day to day life. To allay Albert’s concerns that he had about the photography, Deveney asked him to write the captions for each photograph. The project evolved into a book but sadly Hastings died just before the book was published.
The captions are handwritten at the bottom of the photo on lined paper by Hastings and one can see a gradual deterioration of his handwriting over the six years that the project took to make. The handwritten captions turn the work into a very subjective piece, very moving and thought provoking. Interspersed throughout the book are images of Hastings’ wife who passed away in the 1950’s. He had been living on his own for over forty years. These images have no captions, but one senses that they hold a very important place in Hastings’ heart – the love and longing gently slip off the pages and envelope the reader.
Reference List
Colberg, Jörg (2011). Presenting The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings by Kaylynn Deveney [user-generated content online] Creat. Jörg Colberg. 17 August, 2011. 5 mins 47 sec. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7cUbTc-iGs (Accessed 11 April, 2017)
Page 82 of our course manual suggests that we take a look at former OCA tutor, Sharon Boothroyd’s body of work called ‘If you get married again, will you still love me?’ This is a body of work that is based on the memory of words spoken by children to their separated fathers.
There are only seven images in the body of work that are featured on Boothroyd’s website, the same work also having been featured on LensCulture and Lenscratch in 2012. I found the series very emotive and found myself empathising with each of the children featured in the subjects. Emotions of uncertainty and awkwardness flow through the series. I was reminded of my own feelings when my parents divorced, even though I was eighteen at the time and obviously had a better understanding of the difficult situation, I still felt as if suddenly I didn’t belong any more. I can see my own emotions and doubts echoed on the faces of the children in this series – the disbelief, confusion and the hurt.
Sharon Boothroyd From the series ‘Will you still love me?’, 2010
Although there are no captions accompanying the photos, the title of the series provides enough context for the viewer to insert his or her own narrative to each image. Indeed, I believe that captions would spoil the series and remove the ambiguity that is resident there. All the photos are staged as Boothroyd found that when she was working with the actual fathers and children she “wasn’t getting the truth of the moments that mattered; the hidden moments that are intimate and private” (Photomonitor), so she switch to using actors and friends who she could direct accordingly.
Our course manual directs us to read Sharon Boothroyd’s interview with David Favrod (available on her website at: https://photoparley.wordpress.com/category/david-favrod/). In the interview Favrod explains to Boothroyd the unconscious influences that helped shape his work.
Favrod was born of a Japanese mother and Swiss father in 1982 in Japan. His work in his Hikari postmemory project stems from a conversation with his grandparents where they told him the experiences that they had encountered during World War II: “… my grandparents gave me their memories as a whisper through the air before allowing it to disappear from their minds” (Photoparley). These stories were the source of his inspiration and developed through postmemory (see my post on this for more details).
Favrod does an incredible amount of research before embarking on a project and puts in a lot of work to fully conceptualise his projects. His use of captions with the photographs take the project to a higher level. Without the explanatory text accompanying each photo as displayed on the Photoparley website, the work would be whimsical. However with the text, it becomes powerful and profound, with a poignancy that is revealed from his mixed cultural heritage. However Favrod does not provide explanations when he exhibits his work. He prefers to provide a statement at the exhibition entrance and allow the viewers to engage with the images by questioning their own cultures and histories.
I found it very interesting that he tried to find a way to represent sounds in his images by using onomatopoeias that are found in manga comics which he would paint onto the prints. Not familiar with manga comics except for seeing them around the campus occasionally, I did a quick bit of research into them. Briefly:
Manga can be traced back to the 12th century. The first drawings were produced by a group of artists of frogs and rabbits titled Choju-giga (Scrolls of Frolicking Animals).
Manga as it is known today came about during the US occupation of Japan between 1945 and 1952.
In Japanese, the word “manga” refers to the making of cartoon, comics and animation, as it is composed of two kanji – “man”, meaning “whimsical or impromptu” and “ga”, meaning “pictures”.
Outside of Japan, “manga” is used to describe comics only while “anime” describes cartoons and animated comics of many kinds. Anime can also refer to the animated version of manga.
During the US occupation of Japan, American cartoons were introduced and these subsequently evolved and assimilated into Japanese culture, obviously with a Japanese interpretation. Astro Boy was one of the best known featuring huge eyes.
Astro Boy created by Osamu Tezuka
In the post war years between 1950 and 1969, the manga readership grew and the market was divided into two main marketing genres: shōnen, aimed at boys, and shōjo, aimed at girls. In shōnen, the comics were sub-divided according to age: boys under the age of 18, young men 18 to 30 years old, known as seinen, and adult, grown men, referred to as seijin manga. Sports, action, technology and sexuality featured in these manga.
The female comics featured themes like romance, super-heroines, historical dramas and relationships from a female point of view.
It would seem the main attraction to manga comics is the exaggerated emotions, clean drawn lines which are done in Japanese calligraphy style.
Children are given manga to read from a very young age and they keep on reading these comics, which are said to help shape them as human beings and influence their characters, through well narrated stories on politics, history, business, relationships, life in general and which often carry philosophical or spiritual messages as well. (On a personal note, I find this rather disconcerting that generations should have their characters formed by comic books. That just doesn’t sit well with me).
So after that little digression, it is evident that some of Favrod’s images require a certain cultural background to understand the markings on the photograph.
In an interview with GUP magazine, Favrod noted that all his series are linked. He always strives to introduce his following series in the one he is currently working on.
For me, memories are fictions, so from this idea, the balance [between autobiography and mystery] comes very naturally. … The memory is easily malleable. If I can’t describe to you what I have done yesterday in all its complexity, how can people explain memories to me from 10-25 years ago? I really like this question and walking in this thin line that separates the fiction from the reality.
GUP Magazine
I find his work a little surreal at times, but extremely thought provoking. His work definitely makes me want to linger and ask questions.
Lynda Kuit Photography - Identity and Place 